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I'm not showing every step here, but I also traced the eye and filled in the template with the colors with the little bucket tool. The body is filled with a lighter shade of blue. The hair is filled up with a lighter shade of pink. Be aware some pixels might be blank and you'll have to fill in those, too.

Definitely save your progress as you go!

Now then, with my basic template complete, I can now make it look like just about any pony under the sun. I picked Applejack to be my victim.

To mimic the pony's color, I use the eye dropper tool to "suck" up the color of the body. You can use a photo, or a previously made adoptable, to get the color you need.

Have to change the outline color now. So I pick a darker shade of AJ's orange and use the dropper tool to pick up that darker shade of blue (the outline). Then, like I did before, I replace the colors.

Then I replace the color of the eye. I could have changed the color of the bow with all the same steps, but I just left it in this case.

I haven't bothered with wings, horns, shading, or even a symbol in this tutorial. I may just leave those for the future. But this will probably help you get the basic idea. Here's the finished product, by the way. Ready to fit in an avatar.

Okay, here's another few steps about horns and wings, typical MLP adoptable requirements. There are two basic approaches I can think of. One, you can have a separate file/template for each species that you need. Saves you from worrying about layers.

The second one is using separate layers for the wing(s) and the horn. Saves you from needing several files.

Either case, let's get started. This could be either your unicorn file or layer. (And by the way, I forgot to mention it, but don't worry about the blue checkerboard background. That's just PSP's way of saying that area is transparent).

You use the pen tool to draw in a horn, basically. If you want to make it simple on yourself, just make it a triangle with maybe a rounded tip. I use the same color outline as I used for the body.

Since I use the layer method, I can either show or hide the wing/horn layer when called for. If I'm making Twilight, I show the horn layer and hide the wing layer. I have to take another couple steps to color the horn the right color, as shown in my first post. But it's not a big deal.

Okay, here is the shading segment of the tutorial. The amount and style of shading is totally up to the maker. If you need inspiration as to where the shadows go and the light areas go, take one of your plastic ponies and hold it near a light for ideas.

It can be a simple or as complicated as you feel comfortable with. More complex might be more visually appealing (or at least I think so), but it's also more time consuming.

Here's a few steps added. I've put shading not only under the belly, but down the back of the legs, too. I've also added some brighter colors, where our imaginary light source shines on the pony.

I'm not completely pleased with the shapes of the shadows and highlights, but it's adequate. Sometimes I spend quite a bit of time tweaking it all to try to make it look realistic as I can. Other times I say the [blank] with it!

I borrowed one of my other adoptables for this image. You can make the shading look smoother if you make this kind of checkerboard pattern (one pixel in size) along the edges, where one shade touches another.

Anyway....

Except for shading on the ribbon, I've finished the template I'm going to use over and over again. Which reminds me, you might want to make a backup copy of your template in case you accidentally overwrite it with someone's persona. It would be harder to work with it if your template suddenly looked like... erm... Sketch for example (picking on YLH here).

And I did the hair and the eye too. I added the freckles. Doing symbols is a whole other post I think but it just involves shrinking it and putting it on the adoptable, in a nutshell. Or drawing it by hand. Or simply not making symbols at all - there's no one way to do things.

That basically covers how to make a pixel adoptable. If you like layers, you can make squiggly lines over the pony's feet and have a "boy pony" layer. I have the ribbon on a separate layer and I can take it off if I wanted to make a boy pony.

Good luck with all your adoptable making. If you are dying for more tips and instructions, you could probably find a million tutorials in places like DeviantArt. The sky's the limit.